It is amazing with what equanimity people
accept what government has done to them.

"Hapana zvokuita ("There is
nothing one can do"), say people as you ask them about the destruction of
their property. Or that is what they say out loud. Whispering in my ear a
woman said, "They did it because they lost the election" (meaning in
Mbare).

It took a mentally deranged woman to shout it out loud. Sitting
on the rubble of her destroyed cottage she kept shouting, "&asi
handiwirirane naMugabe ("but I don't agree with Mugabe").

The police
tell people "Get out". Council officials go round and tell people still
sleeping next to their destroyed homes, "We do not want to see you here any
more".

Where are they supposed to go? A certain organisation wants to
help with transport to the rural areas. More and more women with small
children who suffer severely from the cold at night beg for the money to get
on the bus and travel to Gokwe or Mutoko, Birchenough Bridge or
Tsholotsho.

The black plastic sheeting we were distributing offers little
protection.

I keep saying in my little homilies and anywhere else to
anyone who cares to listen, "Violence and oppression seem overwhelming. But
the violent will not win. They will have to answer for what they have
done.

The Kingdom of God brings the reign of justice, love and
compassion.

With Christ the victor we will win, eventually. In the
meantime we are asked to share what we have in love and
compassion."

A Catholic woman from a parish in the northern (more
affluent) suburbs collected money among her fellow sodality members to help
us help the hardest hit, $ 1.5 million so far. We are most grateful. I was
able to hand the money straight on to a couple of mothers with small
children who wanted to return to their rural homes near Bulawayo. I hope
they got there -travelling is a hazardous business if you carry luggage;
there are plenty of thieves around to pounce on you- and were well
received.

But will they have anything to eat there in those
drought-stricken parts of Zimbabwe?

Zimbabwe: the West
blinked first by Michael Holman Don't expect Thabo
Mbeki to take decisions that his critics are ducking.

Something must be done! Something really must be done about Zimbabwe - and
Thabo Mbeki should do it. The call gets louder, the logic gets
weaker. Those who urge the South African president to act are
like Pooh Bear and his hums. They believe if they sing the first line often
enough and fast enough - "Something must be done" - the next lines will come
automatically. The device did not succeed with Pooh; nor is it working for
Mr Mbeki's critics.

What, precisely, should the president
be doing? Imposing trade sanctions? Hardly. Zimbabwe is already enduring Mr
Mugabe's devastation of commercial agriculture. It is being hit by the
sanctions of the market place. Investors and holidaymakers are staying away.
Tourism, one of the main foreign exchange earners, has collapsed; the
currency has plummeted; inflation has rocketed.

Do we
expect South Africa to impose a fuel embargo? Or hold up the railway wagons
on landlocked Zimbabwe's trade route through South Africa? Prime Minister
Vorster used that tactic to put the squeeze on white ruled Rhodesia in the
1970s. It may be tempting. But the danger is that such action could well
precipitate an even deeper crisis. And Mr Mugabe's irrationality and
unpredictability - and his sheer brutality - are among his most potent
weapons.

Should Mr Mbeki intervene militarily? Before we urge
him down that path, let's recall history. Tanzania's military invasion of
Uganda to oust Idi Amin was a disaster. True, the invaders forced Amin to
flee. But they left behind towns devastated by the fighting with retreating
Ugandan forces. And the country's former Prime Minister, Milton Obote -
buddy of Tanzania's Julius Nyerere - regained power in an ill-organised and
disputed election - albeit approved as free and fair by the Commonwealth
observers. Only when the despotic Obote was overthrown in 1986 did Uganda
begin to recover from the combination of Amin and the
invasion.

The suggestion that Mbeki is reluctant to act
because Mugabe is an old comrade of the liberation struggle does not square
with the facts. The South African guerrillas were in an alliance with the
army of Joshua Nkomo, bitter rival of Mugabe. Far from treating Mugabe's men
as allies, they were often seen as enemies. For some members of the
post-apartheid South African army, there may be scores to
settle.

So why does Mr Mbeki not, at the very least, denounce
Mugabe and the suffering he has caused? Why does he not give him the cold
shoulder at diplomatic functions? Why does he not condemn the elections as a
sham?

But then what? None of these actions will faze Mr
Mugabe, or loosen his hold on power. So what can be done?

* Prepare and publish an emergency recovery programme which may help stiffen
resistance to tyranny. It would tabled without delay, to be implemented when
Zimbabwe begins a return to democracy; and would be funded by donors, and
provide the essentials - basic medicines, agricultural inputs, school
books.

* Spend part of the £30m that Britain's aid agency,
Difid, has earmarked for land reform, resettling commercial farmers and
their senior staff in neighbouring Mozambique.

* Name and
shame the banks that continue to lend to Zimbabwe. This tactic forced
Barclays to withdraw from white-ruled South Africa - it can do the same in
Zimbabwe.

* Commission and publish an independent evaluation
of the regional consequences of a real collapse in Zimbabwe. It might
concentrate the minds of African leaders.

* Attach
conditions to food aid. But don't hold your breath. An opportunity to put
pressure on Mr Mugabe first came in November 2001, when the UN World Food
Programme unilaterally announced its intention to feed Zimbabwe. A chance
was missed. The WFP should have consulted the donor governments about the
terms. It did not. And instead of making food aid conditional on electoral
reform, supplies were distributed without obligation.

Only one thing seemed certain at the time. The humanitarian gesture would
backfire, cushioning Mugabe and his regime from the consequences of their
actions. So it turned out. The aid community were either blind, or they
blinked. Mr Mugabe survived. And the West's unconditional generosity has
done - and is doing - more long-term damage to Zimbabwe than short term
good.

Food and servitude - or continued famine and the
possibility of freedom: It is a tough choice, which should be made at the
UN, not in Pretoria. Thabo Mbeki cannot be expected to take a decision which
his critics dodged, and still duck away from.

Michael
Holman is the former Africa editor for the London Financial
Times

Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 9:35 PMSubject: The Democratic Peoples Republic
of Zimbabwe (DPRZ): the cults of Bob and Kim

The Democratic Peoples
Republic of Zimbabwe (DPRZ): the cults of Bob and Kim

Harare
International Airport isn’t overflowing with tourists. On the contrary its vast
emptiness dramatically illustrates the decline in tourism in Zimbabwe. Of course
it has a couple of peak times like the departure of Air Zimbabwe’s flight to
London taking yet another planeload of evacuees on the search for a better
life.

But what is in plentiful abundance in our airport, and our banking
halls, schools and countless other offices in Zimbabwe are portraits of
President Robert Mugabe. Recently I’ve been pondering the extent to which
Zimbabweans have become psychologically entrapped by the cult of Mugabe.

How does it happen that the portrait of someone so unpopular continues
to “adorn” the walls of so many public places?

Like many North Koreans,
Zimbabweans have slowly but surely been sucked into the cult of Mugabe. It
appears that even famine; a decimated economy, rampant inflation and an
extremely poor standard of living cannot dampen this adulation. This was
evocatively illustrated to me when I looked at a photograph of some of the
victims of "Operation Murambatsvina" – the Zimbabwe Government’s term for the
mass evictions currently taking place in our country. The photograph shows
people watching a bulldozer demolishing buildings. On top of a stack of
possessions rescued from a shack, Mugabe’s portrait takes pride of
place.

What stopped the person, who had been forcibly removed from
his/her dwelling, in winter and without warning, from taking the portrait and
smashing it over their knee?

Last month the North Korean government
asked citizens to be ready for a protracted war against the United States of
America. To prepare them for this the North Korean government issued guidelines
for possible evacuation to underground bunkers. The guidelines suggested a list
of items that citizens should take with them on their journey underground. These
included weapons, food and portraits of leader Kim Jong-il. It was emphasised
that citizens should protect the portraits, plaster busts and bronze statues of
Kim.

In June 2004 there was a massive train explosion in the town of
Ryongchon, which killed 150 people and injured 1200. In newspaper reports the
state-controlled Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) congratulated four communist
stalwarts who apparently died “heroic deaths” trying to retrieve portraits of
Kim Jong-il from collapsing buildings. KCNA added that many others "evacuated
portraits before searching after their family members or saving their household
goods." Even if the KCNA was indulging in propaganda the fact remains that
idolatry of Kim Jong-il was being encouraged.

There is no doubt that
actions such as hanging presidential portraits in our public and private spaces
involve us in the promotion and creation of powerful personality cults. This can
end up being very detrimental to our pursuit of individual and collective
liberation. The Korean Central News Agency last year denied that portraits of
Kim Jong-il were being taken down from public places across the country and said
that these were based on rumour and not fact. KCNA went on to say that this sort
of speculation was part of a strategy of psychological warfare by hostile forces
toward North Korea and that the venerable portraits would remain in place.

This statement substantiates the fact that Governments, be they
African, Eastern or Western rely on a variety of tactics to insinuate their
power and their influence over their citizens. There is no law in Zimbabwe that
instructs citizens to hang presidential portraits in their space. Nor is there a
law that forbids citizens from removing them. Legislation isn’t stopping us from
asserting independence of action, fear is.

We continue to criticise
opposition political leaders and civic activists for their lack of courage in
confronting the ruling Zanu PF party head on. Yet many individuals and business
leaders continue to uphold the adulation of Mugabe through public acts of
support such as giving wall space to his portrait. If a citizen is too fearful
to remove a portrait then reflect for a moment on how much courage it takes to
face riot police and tear gas on the street.

In Zimbabwe today we must
question authority at every level. As individuals who seek liberation it is
important to be aware of how insidiously our lives are being infiltrated by the
ruling party. And its part of our individual responsibility to stop them; as Bob
Marley sang, none but ourselves can free our minds.

KaribaFor
two days now residents of Kariba have felt the full force of the brutal ZANU PF
Murambatsvina campaign. Mugabe’s uniformed thugs, a politicized and de-humanized
police force, are sweeping through the town, particularly targeting large
structures for demolition. The police do no bother to enquire whether the
structures are legal or not. Their wholesale destruction is certainly totally
illegal.

Many residents
have taken to sleeping under the trees as there is nowhere else to
go.

MutareThe Green Market in Mutare was
destroyed yesterday morning as Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) swept through the
center like a swarm of locusts. Many of the traders had paid $ 800,000 for shop
licences as recently as January this year, and should have enjoyed the full
protection of the law.

ZRP officers were seen to be looting door and window frames in Nyazura
26. So accustomed have they become to breaking the law with complete impunity,
that they went about their criminal activity boldly and in broad
daylight.

BvumbaThe
beautiful, mountainous Bvumba area in the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe has so
far escaped relatively unscathed the depredations of Mugabe’s ZANU PF thugs.
However all that now seems set to change. So-called “war vets” have taken over
the farm of the Campbell Morrisons this week. The terrain is rocky and hilly and
unsuitable for any cultivation yet War Vet Manyemba is understood to have been
given a loan of Z$ 680 million to grow a wheat crop on the land. He is now
driving around in a brand new luxury twin cab which is worth considerably more
than the loan.

Other farmers in the area by the name of Guild, had a rude awakening when
the Governor, Mike Nyambuya’s girlfriend (Irene Zindi) started moving into their
home while they were still living in it. The Guild family are in possession of a
court order protecting them from interference, yet once again the law was
brushed aside as ZANU PF chefs moved in, taking advantage of the state of legal
anarchy obtaining in the country to enrich themselves personally. It is also
reported that the Guilds had a vegetable crop in the ground worth Z$ 2 billion.

Marondera
RuralIn the rich agricultural belt south east of Marondera
it is reported that Eirene Farm owned by Hamish Charters before it was seized by
the notorious former 5 Brigade commander of Gukurahundi fame, Perence Shiri, has
now been handed over to new Chinese occupants.

In the year, 2000, ZANU PF encouraged and assisted a group of settlers to
invade a number of farms in this area. However the same settlers were summoned
to a meeting recently by the ZANU PF District Administrator, and told they must
be off the farms by June 27, or face dire consequences. Observers reported that
when the new settlers asked where they should go they were told “Back where you
came from”. It is understood that these particular settlers whom ZANU PF used in
2000 to spear-head the invasion of commercial farms in the area, had been
re-settled by the government back in the 1980’s. Their original resettlement
farms having now been taken over by others, they will once again be without any
land when they are moved on from the Marondera District.

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HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- Zimbabwe has extended the destruction
of informal homes and businesses from the cities to rural areas, police told
state radio Friday.

The government calls the campaign a cleanup
effort, but critics at home and abroad say it is a violation of human rights
and inspired by politics.

Police spokesman Austin Chikwavara said his
force has started tearing down shacks and kiosks found at major crossroads
in Chirumanzu, Umvuma and Lalapanzi in the Zimbabwe Midlands, between 200
kilometers (124 miles) and 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of the capital,
Harare.

Another police spokesman, who was not identified, told the radio
station that police also are demolishing homes built without permission on
some of the thousands of farms seized from their white owners for
redistribution to black Zimbabweans.

However, Security Minister
Didymus Mutasa maintained in the same broadcast that the monthlong campaign
was aimed only at cleaning out city streets and would not affect the
government's rural strongholds.

The government's Operation Murambatsvina,
or Drive Out Trash, has already left more than 250,000 city dwellers
homeless in the winter cold. Police also have arrested more than 30,000
vendors, accusing them of dealing in black market goods and attempting to
sabotage Zimbabwe's failing economy.

President Robert Mugabe's dismissed
propaganda chief condemned the evictions Thursday as
"barbaric."

Jonathan Moyo, addressing his first public meeting in the
capital since he was fired in January, said the blitz was linked to a power
struggle within the ruling party over who would succeed the 81-year-old
Mugabe.

"It seems to be a directionless activity of some mischievous
group which imagines it can profit by this in some mysterious way and
position itself ahead of the pack in the succession game," he told the
gathering at a Harare hotel Thursday.

Moyo, who spent five years as
information minister, was fired for opposing Mugabe's choice of Joyce Mujuru
as a vice president. Moyo backed parliamentary Speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa,
who represents a younger generation of ruling Zimbabwe African National
Union-Patriotic Front members.

Opposition leaders say the eviction
campaign is aimed at driving their supporters among the urban poor into
rural areas, where they can be more easily controlled.

"The
government wants to depopulate urban areas ahead of the 2008 elections and
re-create a rural peasantry in which voters are brought under the control of
local chiefs and Mugabe's militias," Sydney Masamvu, an analyst from the
International Crisis Group think tank, said in a statement Friday.

As the
unpopular drive spreads, Zimbabwe officials sought to play down
superstitious fears that the ancestors have been angered.

Residents
of a small mining town told a government newspaper that the presence of a
baboon in a destroyed shack was a sign of the ancestors' displeasure. The
animal leaped out of the shack as it was being pulled down and refused to
leave the site in Shurugwi's Mukusha township, 450 kilometers (280 miles)
south of Harare, The Herald reported.

Many Zimbabweans believe the
spirits of ancestors inhabit wild animals and invade human habitations to
take revenge when offended.

"We are not really concerned because a baboon
can never harm a person," police spokesman Patrick Chademana told The
Herald.

NAIROBI (Reuters) -
Sub-Saharan Africa's traditionally rural-based society is fast disappearing,
with more than half its roughly 700 million people seen living in urban
areas by 2030, the United Nations said Friday.

The head of the U.N.
housing project Habitat said Africa's "chaotic urbanisation" was -- together
with the HIV/AIDS pandemic -- the biggest threat to the world's poorest
continent.

"The pace of urbanisation in the world has caught us all by
surprise," Anna Tibaijuka said in Nairobi, citing that city's vast,
800,000-strong Kibera slum as a prime example.

"By 2030, 51 percent
of Africans will be living in cities and towns. Africa will stop being a
rural continent."

Some 70
percent of Nairobi's roughly three million inhabitants, for example, live in
shanty-towns like Kibera.

"Urban poverty was not an easy issue to sell
but people are catching on to its importance," she added at a news
conference.

The solution lies not in forcibly stopping people from coming
to cities but in making rural areas and smaller towns more attractive to
live in with better services and commercial opportunities, she
said.

The issue of Africa's urban poor has hit headlines in recent weeks
with Zimbabwe's crackdown on shantytowns and informal traders leaving an
estimated 200,000 people homeless.

AFRICA BEHIND U.N.
TARGETS

U.N. Environment Program head Klaus Toepfer, also at the news
conference to discuss the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, agreed better
services were the solution.

"If the electricity doesn't go to the
people, the people will go to the electricity," he said.

Neither
official mentioned Zimbabwe. Nor would they be drawn on questions from local
journalists about forced evictions from the environmentally-crucial Mau
forest in west Kenya.

One of the U.N. targets is to achieve "significant
improvement" in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers around the
world by 2020.

Tibaijuka, a Tanzanian who sat on the Africa Commission
set up by UK leader Tony Blair to prepare a blueprint for the upcoming
summit of G8 rich nations, said the number of global slum-dwellers was
soaring to an expected 1.36 billion by 2015.

That compares with 1
billion now and 700 million in 1990.

Toepfer gave a bleak outlook for
sub-Saharan Africa in respect of the ambitious Millennium Goals, fixed in
2000 to eradicate poverty, improve education and health levels, promote
gender equality and help the environment by 2015.

"Unluckily in
sub-Saharan Africa we are lagging behind in nearly all those eight goals,"
said Toepfer, whose UNEP is based in Kenya. "So we have especially to hurry
up in Africa."

Both U.N. officials urged G8 leaders to produce concrete
results at their Gleneagles meeting, hosted by Blair who has put Africa and
global warming as his priorities.

In the midst of the
informal contest within the Democratic party over who can invent the most
strident rhetoric to describe what is occuring in Gitmo (where there have
been no casualties to date), a real human rights disaster grows
worse:

Zimbabwe has extended the destruction of informal homes and
businesses from the cities to rural areas, police told state radio
Friday.

Police spokesman Austin Chikwavara said his force has started
tearing down shacks and kiosks found at major crossroads in Chirumanzu,
Umvuma and Lalapanzi in the Zimbabwe Midlands, between 200 kilometers (124
miles) and 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of the capital,
Harare.

More below the fold:Jun 17th, 2005: 15:35:42, Not
Rated

The situation in Zimbabwe is bad on so many levels that
it's often difficult to know where to begin. One of the things that is
occuring there, which would certainly be front-page news if the races
involved were reversed, is that the government has seized farmlands from
thousands of Zimbabweans, whose only crime is being white. Mugabe's
government is apparently seeking to exacerbate the
situation:

Another police spokesman, who was not identified, told the
radio station that police also are demolishing homes built without
permission on some of the thousands of farms seized from their white owners
for redistribution to black Zimbabweans.

Further, the recent
round of house clearings is ample indication that while Mugabe is certainly
bad, his likely successors appear to be in a race to see who can hold the
firmest iron grip on the country:

The government's Operation
Murambatsvina, or Drive Out Trash, has already left more than 250,000 city
dwellers homeless in the winter cold. Police also have arrested more than
30,000 vendors, accusing them of dealing in black market goods and
attempting to sabotage Zimbabwe's failing economy.

President Robert
Mugabe's dismissed propaganda chief condemned the evictions Thursday as
"barbaric."Jonathan Moyo, addressing his first public meeting in the capital
since he was fired in January, said the blitz was linked to a power struggle
within the ruling party over who would succeed the 81-year-old
Mugabe."It seems to be a directionless activity of some mischievous group
which imagines it can profit by this in some mysterious way and position
itself ahead of the pack in the succession game," he told the gathering at a
Harare hotel Thursday.One of the regrettable side effects of the
ramped-up rhetoric that seems to be inherent in today's politics is that the
term "atrocity" has lost all coherent meaning. Any time someone is subjected
to a disapproving glare, haunting comparisons to real-life atrocities like
Auschwitz are predictably drawn, so that the younger generation is seemingly
unable to grasp the historical significance of what real atrocities like the
Holocaust looked like. David Gelertner warns us that this kind of
politicization of history is destructive to our ability to reason correctly
about the present:Not knowing history is worse than ignorance of math,
literature or almost anything else. Ignorance of history is undermining
Western society's ability to talk straight and think straight. Parents must
attack the problem by teaching their own children the facts. Only fools
would rely on the schools.My son told me about a high school event that (at
first) I didn't understand. A girl in his English class praised the Vietnam
War-era draft dodgers: "If I'd lived at that time and been drafted," she
said, "I would've gone to Canada too."I thought she was merely endorsing
the anti-war position. But my son set me straight. This student actually
believed that if she had lived at the time, she might have been drafted. She
didn't understand that conscription in the United States has always applied
to males only. How could she have known? Our schools teach history
ideologically. They teach the message, not the truth. They teach history as
if males and females have always played equal roles. They are propaganda
machines.It is apparent, when reading stories like this one out of Zimbabew,
that evil has not been vanquished in the world, and that real-life
atrocities are still being committed. How to make our children understand
that elsewhere across the globe, people in mass numbers are still being
subjected to real, physical harm, that endangers their lives and
families?The only sane course of action is to pull back the rhetoric before
it becomes too late. Pull back the rhetoric before we raise a generation who
is incapable of understanding the distinction between inconvenience and
atrocity. Pull back the rhetoric before we raise a generation so
insensitized to the concept of "atrocity" that they are unwilling to act to
prevent a real one in their very midst.< Chris Muir gets it (0
comments)

since reporters have been effectively banned for
atleast the last 4 years in Zimbabwe. If you freelance outside the Media
and Information Commission's oversight, if you report something not vetted
by the Commission, if you report on the MDC, you get arrested and deported
if you're lucky.

Comment Rated: (none / 0) (User Info)
(#1)

But it's not "atrocity". By: jefferson101

The left can't
commit atrocities when they are in power. Only the U.S. can.When Stalin had
the Gulags up and running full blast, all the "useful idiots" were singing
his praises around the world.When Pol Pot was killing a quarter or so of the
population of Cambodia, the media yawned.When there was a real live
genocide going on in Rwanda, the UN had to hold meetings for a year or so to
decide if anything needed doing.There's another one going in Darfur right
now, too. And the UN is holding meetings about it. I'm sure they'll get it
together in time to save the last couple of hundred of the folks who are
being slaughtered.Same with Rhodesia/Zimbabawe. They will do absolutely
nothing.But let us play loud music to a prisoner or turn the A/C down too
low, and it's a scandal, which must be stopped.I hate it, but there's
not much we can do. We've got enough problems already. And the rest of the
world isn't going to do squat. They probably aren't even equipped
to.Very sad, but there it is.

Last updated: 06/18/2005 05:13:19
WHY do we continue to be so stunned by Robert Mugabe's on-going
implementation of a scorched earth policy against the urban poor? In the
many years that decline and repression have been synonymous with the name
"Mugabe," has it not been obvious that he is a bitter man with many deep
resentments that he uses his office as president as an outlet
for?

The recent general election that he and Zanu PF made very
half-hearted noises about having "won" was what finally tipped old Mugabe to
no longer pretending to be anything but the vicious despot and bully that he
is. He slaughtered thousands of Ndebeles in the 1980s and by and large
disabused them of entertaining any thoughts of a viable alternative power
structure to his. ZAPU was not only swallowed up into Mugabe's party, its
leaders capitulated and threw their lot in totally with Mugabe, even at the
cost of completely alienating themselves from the generality of the people
of Matebeleland, as elections since the 1987 "Unity Accord" have
consistently showed.

It is vintage Mugabe to bludgeon a
perceived political foe into submission, and when he then submits, throwing
him a few alms to salve the pain and humiliation. It has worked for him many
times, and it is now his modus operandi. In the case of the ZAPU leaders
that he neutralized, his two-pronged strategy involved a ferocious spilling
of blood through the Fifth Brigade in a way that was so vicious, so
widespread and so violent that Joshua Nkomo and his lieutenants swallowed
hard and made an accommodation with Mugabe. Mugabe's coup de grace was to
then buy out those lieutenants of Nkomo's from under him with positions and
patronage. In short order, many of these leaders that Mugabe had hounded and
persecuted became some of Mugabe's most obedient lackeys, even as they
became increasing alienated from the people for no longer articulating their
concerns and fears.

He has used this same old tactic within
Zanu PF to neutralize potential and actual opponents successfully over the
years, if only without the spilling of blood of the 1980s. The dual tactics
of inducing fear and then buying out his foes has kept him in power for
close to three decades now.

It worked recently with the
neutralization of the white commercial farmers as a source of power separate
from his. Up until Mugabe began expropriating commercial farmland, he and
the Commercial Farmers Union had an accommodation in which he respected
their disproportionate economic power, and they in turn were happy to do
business with him as long as he generally left them alone and responded
positively to their lobbying on behalf of their interests as big farmers.
The two parties may not have been bosom buddies, but they had an implicit
understanding of the importance of each for the other. For the years that
the post-Independence economy seemed to be ticking along fairly well, that
veneer of prosperity covered up for the many unresolved underlying racial,
economic, social tensions from the pre 1980 era.

Then the white
farmers got uppity and threw their lot in with the MDC as both general
economic decline and more specifically, Mugabe began to threaten what they
had began to breathe easy and presume to be safe tenure on their farms
almost two decades after Independence. Mugabe threw off his cloak of
moderation that he had used to so devastatingly and effectively lull the
white farmers into a false sense of security and all hell broke loose. The
white farmers as a group broke ranks with Mugabe, the unstated accommodation
they had enjoyed with him lying in tatters. That accommodation had been that
the white farmers continue to be a strong, dynamic source of forex,
employment, taxes and so forth as long as they accepted Mugabe as the
undisputed king and didn't try to interfere with his kingship in any way. In
return Mugabe would allow them to continue to enjoy their privileged lives,
largely removed from the realities of most of their fellow
citizens.

Mugabe reacted with characteristic outrage to the white
farmers daring to abrogate their unwritten agreement and seek his very
ouster by so flagrantly supporting the MDC. And worse, for the first time
the white farmers seemed to have enough narrow common interests with a
sufficient number of black Zimbabweans for the MDC to have actually
threatened Mugabe's hold on power. No way was Mugabe going to tolerate that!
Who did the white farmers think they were?! "After all I have done for them,
they dare to defect to the opposition and try to humiliate me by so openly
supporting Tsvangirai and the MDC? We'll see about that!"

As
they say, "the rest is history." All of a sudden the economic power and
"whiteness" that had conferred some measure of protection to whites as a
group no longer did so. We saw for the first time since Independence whites,
particularly farmers, become targets of government-sponsored warlords,
ostensibly targeting them on behalf of the "landless masses." We have since
found out of course that the whole idea was to give a few hired mercenaries
some temporary prominence and some of the spoils of looting, but in reality
the grand design, only being effected now, was to give the juiciest,
choicest expropriated farms to Mugabe's many cronies for them to keep
beholden to him, since the general state of the country militated that many
more previous supporters of his would likely desert him.

Crude
but effective! The white farmers have been decimated as an economic bloc and
general white confidence in Zimbabwe and sense of security have been shaken
as never before. Some would argue that this is a necessary and welcome
post-Independence progression that had to come sooner or later, part of
tearing down the psychological and other vestiges of the colonial era, but I
will deal with that in future contributions. The relevance of this
development for the point I am trying to make here is that Mugabe achieved
his main aim, the one aim that supercedes all others in everything he does:
he had showed the whites who is really the boss: him. Over and over I hear
white Zimbabweans stress how after the campaign against them of the last six
years, they have learned to keep their heads down, even if they have not
thrown their lot in with Mugabe like many of the "leaders" of Matebeleland
did after Mugabe's bloody pogrom there of the 1980s. What matters for Mugabe
is that a numerically small but economically powerful potential source of
trouble for him in the whites has been neutralized.

Whatever
devastation that show of power leaves in its wake to individuals, groups or
the country is neither here nor there. Whether it is the Ndebeles, Shona sub
groups, whites, students, the trade union movement or whoever, who dares
oppose Mugabe gets what's coming to them. The viciousness of their
come-uppance depends on the circumstances, including how threatened Mugabe
feels by them.

Coming back to the present, the urban electorate
didn't learn its lesson after its humiliating rejection of Mugabe in various
referenda. If only in this last election they had come to papa on their
knees, confessing the error of the ways and voting for papa's chosen
candidates, everything would have been fine. Mugabe would not have cared any
more than he has done all along whether the cities were clean or not. But
no! Instead of capitulating like all previous challengers of Mugabe's power
have done in the past, the urbanites continue to spurn Comrade Mugabe!
Clearly they needed a stronger, more graphic message to get though their
thick heads and show them how to "act right" from here on.

You
know the rest of the story. "But Makunike, how do you explain that this
latest action affects many of his own supporters? Surely this is a
non-political civic exercise like his cronies protest it is?" Ah, a minor
detail. In the massacres of the 1980s in Matabeleland, in the violence
against the MDC and white farmers in the last few years, Mugabe has never
shown any particular concern about protecting the "innocent" from the
specific targets of those "misguided" elements that oppose him. Whatever
collateral damage affects "innocent bystanders," well, that's just too bad,
isn't it? "To make an omelette, you gotta break some eggs." Sorry if some of
those eggs are innocent.

Most people are still trying to come
to terms with the spectre of a government that claims to be acting in the
interests of the people by dispossessing them, beating them, tearing down
their homes and wrecking their livelihoods! How could achieving the
cleanliness and neatness we would all want possibly justify the shameful,
eager violence of Mugabe's foot soldiers? How could it possibly be alright
to have a tidy city at the expense of thousands of families hungry, cold,
humiliated, angry, hurt; refugees in their own country, at the hands of
their own government at a time of great enough suffering as it
was?

What Mugabe's farewell actions have helped do is make it clear
what we are dealing with here. For those who continue to insist despite all
the years of contrary evidence that Mugabe is on some grand pro-Africa
scheme, the bankruptcy of that claim has been laid bare for all to see.
There are no "imperialists" lurking behind Mugabe's soldiers and policemen
forcing them to mistreat and oppress their fellow citizens like they are
doing as I write. There can be no plausible claim that "Blair" is the evil
hand at play at the shameful, anti-African actions of Mugabe's cruel regime
that we are witnessing today.

He has created conditions wherein
strength means violence. In his scheme of things, to admit an error is to be
weak, so even when you see the havoc your actions are wreaking on the
people, to be strong, to be in power, to be tough is to press on. And there
are still a few of the previous multitude of Mugabe's supporters and
admirers who see this obstinacy, this viciousness, and this coldness as
something to be admired.

But an important thing that Mugabe's
latest own goal has done is to expose him for the charlatan he is for all
those who care to open their eyes and see what is before them. When one's
rhetoric is not only so at odds with one's actions, but when it causes the
deprivation, humiliation and suffering of the very people who you say
motivates all your actions, what morality, what consistency, what heroism
can you claim legitimately?

There is certainly great evil in this
tortured, wonderful land of Zimbabwe, yes, and that evil emanates from its
ruler, Mugabe. Whatever the eventual fallout of the current actions of
Mugabe's para-military forces against the people, they will always serve as
a watershed of some sort in so clearly exposing to even those who would have
liked to make a hero out of Mugabe, what he is in reality: an incompetent
manager of a modern nation and a cruel despot for whom merely occupying the
seat of power comes before all else, whatever the cost. CONTACT
CHIDO: chidomakunike@yahoo.com
Makunike is a social and political commentator based in Harare

Gono was largely expected to be
a new addition to the enlarged list of 120 senior lieutenants of President
Robert Mugabe. Previously, 95 officials were banned from travel throughout
the European Union, and had their assets frozen.

An official of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said a clarification was
sought from the drafters of the sanctions list.

"Basically they said Gono
was not a member of te Zanu PF politburo, central committee or cabinet," an
MDC official said. "I find that criteria flawed because not only is this guy
Mugabe's banker, financier and adviser but he is directing some dangerous
policies like the current demolition of poeople's houses."

Last year,
Gono flew into the UK to promote his Homelink project to raise foreign
currency for the country's failing economy. He breezed through because his
name did not appear on the sanctions list.

For a long time, Gono has been
Mugabe and his wife Grace's personal banker. He has supplied foreign
currency to Mugabe's shopaholic wife on her foreign trips, and is one of his
most trusted officials.

The confusion over the list released earlier this
week was not helped by the presence of former Harare mayor Solomon Tawengwa
who died last year.

Reacting to the sanctions renewal, Zimbabwe's State
Security Minister Didymus Mutasa blasted: "The devil is continuing with its
devilish ways. We do not expect any good from them. They want us to level
the playing field for the MDC while they are not levelling it with Zanu PF.
The ban means we won't be able to go to Europe to tell the public there
about the lies they are spreading about Zimbabwe."

The EU and its
American allies imposed sanctions on President Robert Mugabe's government
after the disputed presidential elections in March 2002. Western observers
described the elections as flawed after scores of opposition supporters were
killed, including two aides to opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai.

The revised EU list now includes news faces: Manicaland
Provincial Governor Tinaye Chigudu, Deputy Minister for Industry and
International Trade Phineas Chihota, Minister of State for Public and
Interactive Affairs Chen Chimutengwende, Zanu PF Politburo Committee members
Alice Chimbudzi and Victoria Chitepo.

The Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission (ZEC) chairman George Chiweshe, Chairman for Electoral
Supervisory Commission (ESC) Theophilus Gambe, Minister of Information and
Publicity and his deputy Tichaona Jokonya and Bright Matonga were also added
on the list.

Mashonaland East Provincial governor Ray Kaukonde, Deputy
Minister for Rural Housing and Social Amenities Joel Biggie Matiza, Minister
of Foreign Affairs and his deputy Simbarashe Mumbengegwi and Obert
Matshalaga respectively, Deputy Minister for Health and Child Welfare Edwin
Muguti, Minister for Water Resources and Infrastructural Development Munacho
Mutezo were also included.

My letter was written to show you that some
people are able to have a PlanB and others not, and that you were fortunate
to be in a position to haveone. Some people have Choice and some do not. It
has never been easy whenone relocates at any time. It has obviously not
been easy for you, but itwas your Choice and you are young enough to be able
to cope. Thousands ofex-Zimbabweans are doing just that.

SO - don't
knock all the people who have stayed behind. Don't painteveryone who has
stayed as co-existers. Perhaps they want to, but cannotgo!

The
life-style in Zimbabwe has been privileged. This is not
disputed...weinherited this historically and have been very lucky to be able
to sit on"our fat arses". But you cannot compare 70 year olds doing menial
tasks inthe UK with the same age group in Zimbabwe, who might have to
locate. I amsure that most of those old people you see doing these menial
tasks haveprobably been doing them since they were eighteen. Yet they still
have allthe privileges that other people in the UK are able to
have...likepensions, medicals etc. They are not doing something totally
foreign towhat they have been used to. But, perhaps they are asylum seekers
etc andare to be pitied. However, would you really like your mother or
father tobe doing these tasks (without the said privileges) just to stop
payingtaxes etc to this government if, with a bit of compromise, they could
staywith their present life-style? You too, will be old one day. Many
oldpeople I know who are in the UK are able to live only through the
charityof various groups and not the help of the UK Government.

We
all hear what you are trying to say and do, Trevor. But do try and
keepeverything in perspective.

I was just given your site as i have been out of touch
with Peter and AnnMastyn (Gilnockie Farms) out ofHarare. Does anyone have
theirwhereabouts?.

She and I have been friends for over 25 years and
corresponding till about1 yr ago, and I'm trying to find her??? if not, are
there other places Imight look other than here ? Thanks and peace to all of
you,

Patti
Lousen

---------------------------------------------------------------

All
letters published on the open Letter Forum are the views and opinionsof the
submitters, and do not represent the official viewpoint of Justicefor
Agriculture.

HARARE - More than 300 000 children of informal
traders and city squatter families in Zimbabwe have dropped out of school in the
last four weeks alone after their homes were destroyed by the government,
ZimOnline has learnt.

Officials at the Ministry of Education head office in
Harare said directors of education in the country’s 10 provinces were last week
asked to compile figures of children under 13 years no longer coming to school
because their families were evicted in the government’s highly unpopular urban
clean-up operation.

"The average figure of pupils no longer attending
school because their family has been evicted is 100 per school and these are
just primary school kids. But in secondary schools, it appears the effect of the
evictions has not been that devastating,” said one senior official, who spoke
anonymously for fear of victimisation.

ABOUT 300 000 children have been forced to drop out of school as a
result of the crackdown in urban areas.

The official said school authorities have not
been able to establish the whereabouts of the children many of whom are now just
roaming around urban areas with their families and sleeping in the open after
the shanty homes were brunt down by the police.

"It is not known whether these children will come
back to school once things stabilise or they are out for good. What is clear is
that they have been forced out of school because of the prevailing
circumstances," said the official.

Education Minister Aeneas Chigwedere yesterday
acknowledged that school children who lived in squatter homes had been forced to
drop out of school. But he said his ministry was only going to act on the matter
after fully assessing the problem.

Chigwedere said: "We are still assessing the
situation. Any reactive measures will be taken thereafter." He did not say when
exactly he plans to take the ‘reactive measures’.

More than 22 000 informal traders have been arrested
mostly for selling goods without licence while close to a million families have
been left without shelter after armed soldiers and police razed down their
shanty homes in an operation the government says is necessary to restore the
beauty of urban areas, law and order.

The United Nations, European Union, United States,
Amnesty International, local churches and human rights groups have all condemned
the operation as insensitive and a gross violation of poor people’s human
rights.

Zimbabwe’s main opposition Movement for Democratic
Change party has accused the government of unleashing the campaign in urban and
peri-urban areas to punish residents there for rejecting it in last March’s
controversial parliamentary election. The government, which says it will now
extend the clean-up operation to former white farms against illegal settlers,
denies it is being motivated by politics.

Commenting on the massive drop out of children from
school, one retired educationist William Mupita said it was the first time since
Zimbabwe’s 1970s independence war that such large numbers of children are
quitting school within a month.

"This is probably the first time since the days of
the liberation war that such a high number of children drop out of school in
such a short period of time. These figures should alarm anyone serious about
this country's human development," said Mupita, who worked in the education
sector for over 40 years. - ZimOnline

Media commission meets to discuss papers' fateSat 18 June
2005 HARARE - The Zimbabwe government's Media and Information Commission
(MIC) met on Thursday and yesterday to consider whether to lift bans on
three newspapers closed in the last two years. But ZimOnline was
unable last night to establish what the state-appointed commission had
finally resolved after meeting for two days.

The Daily News and the
Daily News on Sunday were forcibly shut down and their equipment seized by
the police in September 2003 in a crackdown by the government on independent
newspapers.

The government said it was closing down the papers
because they were not registered with the commission as required under its
Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA).

Forty-five journalists working for the two papers were also charged for
practising without being registered by the commission. The journalists are
facing trial on the charge and if convicted face up to two years in jail
each.

The Tribune, owned by a well-known member of President
Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party, Kindness Paradza, was shut down last
June for also breaching provisions of the AIPPA.

The closure of
the paper was attributed more to infighting within Mugabe's party over who
will succeed him when he steps down in three years time.

Both
Paradza and Sam Sipepa Nkomo, chief executive officer of Associated
Newspapers of Zimbabwe that publishes the Daily News and Daily News on
Sunday, said they had not been informed of the outcome of the MIC's
deliberations.

"They met today (yesterday) to deliberate on our
issue but I am not aware of the outcome as yet, but we are prepared to start
operating even if they give us the licence today," Paradza told
ZimOnline.

MIC chairman Tafataona Mahoso could not be reached on
his phone last night for comment on the matter.

The Zimbabwe
Supreme Court last March ordered the MIC to review its decision in 2003 to
deny the Daily News and its sister paper a licence to operate. But the
commission has to date not done so.

At the time of its closure the
Daily News was the largest circulating non-government-owned newspaper in
Zimbabwe. - ZimOnline

Forex crisis hits blood transfusion servicesSat 18 June
2005 HARARE - Stock levels at Zimbabwe's blood bank have dropped to
critical levels with the National Blood Transfusion Services (NBTS) unable
to increase blood collection because it has no foreign currency to import
special bags used to store blood. Zimbabwe imports the bags from
South Africa, France, America and Japan but has been unable to do so for the
past three months owing to hard cash shortages.

NBTS public
relations manager Emmanuel Masvikeni confirmed the shortage of blood bags
because there was no forex to pay foreign suppliers. But he said the
situation had not yet reached a crisis saying the national blood bank still
had about 8 to 10 weeks supply of bags.

He said: "The organisation
has about 8-10 weeks supply of blood bags and failure to purchase more will
result in a crisis . . . we have problems getting the foreign currency to
import the bags as we all know we don't manufacture them (blood bags) in
Zimbabwe."

He, however, said the organisation was making frantic
efforts to get more blood bags before the situation worsens.

The shortage of blood bags is only one in a long list of shortages of basic
survival commodities among them, essential medical drugs, fuel, electricity,
food and many others because there is no hard cash to pay foreign
suppliers.

Zimbabwe, which must import 1.2 million tonnes of grain
or 4 million people out of its population of 12 million people will starve,
has grappled an acute foreign currency crisis since the International
Monetary Fund withdrew balance-of-payments support six years
ago.

The forex crisis worsened after President Robert Mugabe began
seizing farmland from white farmers destabilising the mainstay agricultural
sector that had helped generate the bulk of hatred cash earnings through
exports of mostly tobacco and horticultural products. -
ZimOnline

Judge to make ruling on former minister's bail
applicationSat 18 June 2005 HARARE - High Court judge Susan Mavangira
is set to rule next week on an application for bail by jailed former finance
minister Chris Kuruneri who is facing charges of breaching Zimbabwe's tight
exchange regulations. Defence lawyer Jonathan Samkange argued that
Kuruneri be granted bail as he had volunteered his funds to the state as
revealed by Reserve bank governor Gideon Gono's testimony in
court.

"The applicant saved the nation from collapse and there was
a possibility that lives could have been lost. The funds which he made
available were free funds and Dr Gono as the administrator of
the

Exchange Control Authority said the conduct of the applicant
was above board and did not contravene the Exchange Control Authority," he
said.

"Dr Gono's evidence corroborated by Mr Musiiwa from the
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe clearly left everyone in the country wondering why
the applicant is still in custody."

Mavangira is expected to
make a ruling on the application next week. There were fears that Kuruneri
might remain in custody until September when the trial resumes.

Kuruneri is accused of siphoning huge amounts of foreign currency outside
the country where he allegedly bought luxury properties. He has denied the
charge.

The former finance minister has already been convicted of
another lesser charge of possessing a Canadian passport in contravention of
Zimbabwe's laws which bar dual citizenship. - ZimOnline

ZANU PF's deputy security
director Kenny Karidza - arrested last December on espionage charges - was
on Thursday granted $1 million bail by Harare Magistrate William Kasimoto
after spending slightly over six months in State custody.

The Daily
Mirror crew yesterday saw Karidza - who has since refuted the charges
levelled against him - at the Harare magistrates' Court, clad in civilian
clothes.Karidza, Zanu PF director of external affairs Itai Marchi,
businessman Phillip Chiyangwa, banker Itai Matambanadzo and Zimbabwe's
ambassador designate to Mozambique Godfrey Dzvairo were arrested for
reportedly selling State secrets to Zimbabwe's enemies.Subsequently, the
five were dragged to court for snapping provisions of the Official Secrets
Act weeks after they had disappeared.It later came to light that the high
profile suspects were in State hands.George Chikumbirike, Karidza's lawyer,
confirmed yesterday that his client had been granted bail with conditions
attached after the magistrate dismissed an appeal by the State to keep him
in custody. "He was granted $1 million bail with conditions. We are in the
process of paying the bail and we expect him to be released today
(yesterday)," Chikumbirike said.However, Chikumbirike kept the attached
conditions close to his chest saying the proceedings were in camera and that
gagged him from speaking to the press.Joseph Musakwa, the Director of
Public Prosecutions, was yesterday evasive when contacted for comment and
referred this newspaper to the Master of the High court, Charles Nyatanga,
who could not be reached till the time of going to print."We were not in
court," Musakwa said. "Get the information from the Master of the High
Court."The ruling party's security chief first appeared in court on December
24 amid tight security and was remanded in custody in proceedings in which
his relatives and the press were barred for security reasons.During one
of his appearances in court, Karidza who doubles up as a music promoter said
he was detained for 16 days, two weeks in underground cells and the
remainder at I Commando, before being hauled before the courts.He claimed
that during his detention he was interrogated over the hotly debated
presidential succession issue.Karidza said in court that the security
personnel accused him of strongly backing former Parliamentary Speaker
Emmerson Mnangagwa who was nominated as one of the two vice presidents by
four provinces during the run up to Zanu PF's elections for the
presidium.However, the pendulum swung in favour of Joice Mujuru who now
deputises President Robert Mugabe alongside Joseph Msika.Before bail was
granted, Karidza's hearing transformed into a trial within a trial where he
was supposed to prove claims of torture and that as a result supplied the
State with information under duress.In January, he successfully applied for
magistrate Peter Kumbawa to step down from presiding over the case.This
saw Kasimoto taking over after Kumbawa recused himself.Dzvairo, Marchi and
Matambanadzo were convicted and sentenced to jail terms of up to six
years.The trio has since appealed against both conviction and sentence in
the High Court.In Chiyangwa's case, High Court judge Charles Hungwe
refused to place him on further remand in February this year, before
blasting Kumbawa for being "overzealous" when he threw Chiyangwa behind bars
arguing that his judgment should not have been swayed by media
reports.The former Chinhoyi legislator is back in his province. He is
attempting to regain his chairmanship he lost when he was arrested.An
internal party disciplinary hearing on Chiyangwa's suspension is expected to
be held within a fortnight.

THE police this week pounced
on defiant vendors who had resurfaced in Glen View and Budiriro confiscating
goods worth millions of dollars.At Tichagarika Shopping Centre in Glen View
3 riot police forced a vendor to roll on the ground just outside an OK
branch.The defiant vendors were caught selling an assortment of basic
commodities, at astronomical prices, despite a government directive not to
do so as part of efforts to clean up the city.A 2kg packet of sugar that
costs $7 500 over the counter was going for at least $20 000 while a
kilogram of the same commodity was fetching $10 000.Vendors are said to wake
up in the wee hours of the morning, queue for basic commodities at shop
doors and later sell the products on the black market.Most vendors who spoke
to The Daily Mirror said vending was their only source of income and
livelihood.Meanwhile, the police on Tuesday and Wednesday revisited Glen
View 8 and ordered residents who had not finished demolishing illegal
structures to do so.Following the order, scores of residents in Glen
View 8 and 3 then hurriedly destroyed the said structures under the watchful
eye of the police.Yesterday, Harare provincial police spokesperson, Whisper
Bondai urged members of the public to report defiant vendors to the
police.He stressed the operation would only succeed if people co-operated
with law enforcement agents."We are still carrying on with the clean up
exercise whose success also depends on the cooperation of members of the
public. Notifying us about flush points (where vending is taking place)
would definitely make our job easier," he said.Asked why the police were
beating up people Bondai replied: "The police do not assault people.They
are there to arrest those involved in illegal activities and bringing them
to court for prosecution," adding minimum force is only applied on those
trying to resist apprehension.

THE
Town Clerk of Chitungwiza City Council, Simbarashe Mudunge, has been
suspended for allegedly misusing $230 million availed by the local
government ministry to upgrade the dormitory town's sewer system.Mudunge
was suspended after Wednesday's full council meeting where city engineer
Conrad Mvududu filed a report about the misuse of the money.Chitungwiza
mayor Misheck Shoko confirmed that Mudunge was suspended, but could not
provide detailed information, saying he was yet to set up a committee to
investigate allegations against his surbordiante."It is true (that Mudunge
has been suspended). We served him with a suspension letter yesterday
(Thursday) However, I am yet to set up a committee to look into the
allegations," said Shoko.Mudunge confirmed his suspension. "I received
the suspension letter yesterday (Thursday) but I can not comment because
there were no reasons stated for my suspension," he said.However, sources in
the council said the local government ministry provided the city with the
money soon after President Robert Mugabe pledged to end sewer problems in
Chitungwiza during his campaign for last March's parliamentary polls.

Her mother has bedded her down on the spot, still strewn
with rubble, where their house once stood. The sun is rising in the sky, it
is getting warmer, and the emaciated woman on the ground, a TB patient
affected also by AIDS, welcomes the warming sun after a chilly night
sleeping on the open veranda of their landlord's house, the only building
still standing on these large premises near the Islamic Mosque in
Mbare.

We have given up the idea providing people sleeping in the open,
still a big number, with tents. The police will not allow it. They told
women camping in the open next to Stoddard Hall: "We do not want to see you
here by tomorrow". Instead we were given black plastic sheeting, to give
people at least a little protection against the cold at night.

I
remember people sleeping under such plastic sheets towards the end of the
war, 1978-79. We seem to be back full-circle to those conditions. A father
of three sent his family home; he wants to stay and keep his job.

He
went away with plastic sheets and blankets.

Liz (not her real name) has a
baby at the breast and two toddlers whom she wants to take to their
unemployed father who divorced her, in Mutare, -a desperate measure. I ask a
woman who is assisting me for advice. She is against the idea. This would
amount to 'baby-dumping', she says. We 'park' her provisionally in our
garage. Being of [foreign] origin she has nowhere to go. But the police put
pressure on her to go away -to go where? To dissolve in thin
air?

Those other three women, Zimbabwe-born of alien Malawian parents,
with 14 children found a lorry to take them to Mount Darwin: the driver
promises them places to stay. I hope it is true.

It is monstrous what
is being done to these people. The statements by church leaders are welcome.
But Bishops have to speak out not just once, but continuously, pointing out
daily the suffering of these people discarded as tsvina
(dirt).

Apartheid South Africa used to do this with its people -you
remember the discarded people of 'District Six' (coloured people) in Cape
Town?

They have ruined the "illegal" people, informal traders and
lodgers. Now they seem bent on destroying the people with legal residence as
well: they all received bills demanding huge back payments (between 3 and 10
million) for water, sewerage, refuse collection (the latter non-existent),
as well as large PENALTIES, penalizing them for what?

A stream of
people comes to the parish waving those ominous letters, asking for loans.
But that is beyond our capacity.

What is the purpose of this? Do they
want to force the owners, many elderly, to sell their houses and drive them
out of Mbare where they have spent a lifetime?

A woman came to me in tears. She had her house destroyed and has
been sleeping out in the cold for the last two weeks, with her two teenage
sons. She sent the boys to relations in another township. Now their house
has been razed to the ground as well, and the boys are back with her,
sleeping out in the open once more. She wants to stay in Mbare by all means
so the boys can continue their education. Our church premises are already
accommodating four families. Where can I put her and her family?

Our
cook had to interrupt her work and run home. A rumour went round that "they"
would come and knock down all verandas, porches, any additions to their
otherwise perfectly legal houses not included in official documents.

My
personal assistant who lives in Chitungwiza, a satellite town of Harare,
could not come to work today. His house, a perfectly nice little cottage in
the back of his mother's garden, is being destroyed today, and he has to
save his belongings. He got married in April, and this was the first home of
the young couple. There had been a rumour the mayor of Chitungwiza was
asking for homes to be spared after the corner tuckshops had been destroyed.
He must have lost his battle with the "big people" in Harare.

Who are
the evil people who make these terrible decisions, immoral and insane? Are
they devoid of all humanity? We are being promised instant housing schemes
for displaced people. Who can take such talk seriously [given] the failed
housing policy of this government over its 25 years in power?

For a
week or so we helped displaced people sleeping outside in the cold with bus
fares. But the more we helped the more came. There was such a crowd
yesterday and so much noise that I was afraid it might attract the attention
of a truckful of riot police busy knocking down some more structures a
couple of yards down the road from the entrance to our church
compound.

I enlisted the help of our little J and P group. They are
taking down the names of all who need assistance to go back to their rural
home (and food and blankets as well, of course). But even that may not be
the solution: there are rumours that certain rural chiefs and headmen refuse
to accept refugees from town. Some have been sent back. Many want to take
their belongings as well, furniture, cooking utensils. Can we hire trucks
and lorries and transport them there? What if they are sent back?

And
will they find food there? People from Mbare are being punished for having
voted for the wrong party. They have a bad political reputation.

Will
they be starved at home? Will their children be given places in
schools?

William (not his real name) ran away from harassment in the
rural areas because his wife belonged to the wrong party. Now he is running
back to his wife's rural home at the back of beyond where there is nothing
for them and their five children.

Then there are those who have no
rural home, aliens or children of aliens. Fernando [not his real name] comes
from Mozambique and would like to go home. But his wife is from Zimbabwe,
and has even a job. Will she want to live in Mozambique? Will they accept
her? What about their three little children?

When I looked out of my
window this morning, there was an even greater crowd. Remember: these are
people who can and do work and look after their families. They are
carpenters and metalworkers, street vendors and makeshift caterers, tough
folk who have managed to survive on the shadowy side of what used to be
called Sun City Harare. Now they have been made beggars. That too is a crime
against humanity.

World leaders have condemned the bulldozing of homes in
Zimbabwe, but campaigners accused politicians of being slow to act to stop
it.

The destruction is part of attempts to crack down on opposition
supporters by President Mugabe by evicting them wholesale from urban
centres.

The UN estimates that more than 200,000 people have been left on
the street as thousands of homes and even an orphanage have been bulldozed
by Operation Restore Order.

Children from Hatcliff Orphanage in a
shanty town close to Harare, many of whom have been left destitute after
their parents died from Aids, were given 24 hours to get out.

Sister
Patricia Walsh from the orphanage said: "It was one of the most painful
experiences. I never thought I would see the day this would happen to
Zimbabwe."

Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw reacted by saying: "I deplore
the horrific and ruthless actions of the Zimbabwean Government, who have
ruined the lives of thousands of innocent families, condemning them to
homelessness."

He added: "Last Monday we summoned the acting Ambassador
from Zimbabwe to the Foreign Office to express Britain's
outrage.

"This week we and European partners froze the assets of more
members of the Mugabe regime and banned them from travelling."

Harare - Zimbabwe has extended the destruction of
informal homes and businesses from the cities to rural areas, police told
state radio on Friday.

The government calls the campaign a
clean-up effort, but critics at home and abroad say it is a violation of
human rights and inspired by politics.

Police spokesperson
Austin Chikwavara said his force has started tearing down shacks and kiosks
found at major crossroads in Chirumanzu, Umvuma and Lalapanzi in the
Zimbabwe Midlands, between 200km and 300km south of the capital,
Harare.

Another police spokesperson, who was not identified, told
the station police are also demolishing homes built without permission on
some of the thousands of farms seized from their white owners for
redistribution to black Zimbabweans.

However,
Security Minister Didymus Mutasa maintained in the same broadcast that the
month-long campaign was aimed only at cleaning out city streets and would
not affect the government's rural strongholds.

The government's
Operation Murambatsvina, or Drive Out Trash, has already left more than 250
000 city dwellers homeless in the winter cold. Police also have arrested
more than 30 000 vendors, accusing them of dealing in black market goods and
attempting to sabotage Zimbabwe's failing economy.

President Robert
Mugabe's dismissed propaganda chief condemned the evictions on Thursday as
"barbaric".

Jonathan Moyo, addressing his first public meeting in
the capital since he was fired in January, said the blitz was linked to a
power struggle within the ruling party over who would succeed the
81-year-old Mugabe.

"It seems to be a directionless activity of
some mischievous group which imagines it can profit by this in some
mysterious way and position itself ahead of the pack in the succession
game," he told the gathering at a Harare hotel on Thursday.

Moyo, who spent five years as information minister, was fired for opposing
Mugabe's choice of Joyce Mujuru as a vice president. Moyo backed
parliamentary Speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa, who represents a younger
generation of ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front
members.

Opposition leaders say the eviction campaign is aimed
at driving their supporters among the urban poor into rural areas, where
they can be more easily controlled. - Sapa-AP

Churches in troubled Zimbabwe have scheduled days of
prayer and reflection, as the Catholic bishops in the southern African
country issued a Pastoral Letter, The Cry of the Poor, condemning ongoing
demolitions.

An Ecumenical meeting held at the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops'
Conference (ZCBC) offices in Harare on June 16, 2005 proposed that two
announcements be made in all Churches on Sunday June 19, 2005
that:

1. Priests and Pastors meet in their Fraternities at a selected
venue for prayers and reflection on the current events in our country on
Thursday, June 23, 2005.

(The venue for Harare is the Catholic
Cathedral from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon. Other cities and regions can announce
their own venues, times and the day, if different.)

2. Prayers be
offered for the whole nation by all congregations on Sunday June 26, 2005 in
all churches, and a reflection read or given along the lines appearing in
the latest Pastoral Letter of the ZCBC, The Cry of the Poor, emphasizing
human dignity, human rights and respect for all regardless of social
status.

The Pastoral Lettert -whose full text appears in a separate
dispatch from CISA- says in part:

"Any claim to justify this
operation in view of a desired orderly end becomes totally groundless in
view of the cruel and inhumane means that have been used. People have a
right to shelter and that has been deliberately destroyed in this operation
without much warning. While we all desire orderliness, alternative
accommodation and sources of income should have been identified and provided
before the demolitions and stoppage of informal trading. We condemn the
gross injustice done to the poor."